Don won’t make a House call
Refuses inquiry invite
President Trump and his lawyers won’t participate in the House Judiciary Committee’s first impeachment hearing Wednesday, the White House announced Sunday.
“Under the current circumstances, we do not intend to participate in your Wednesday hearing,” White House Counsel Pat Cipollone said in a letter to the panel’s chair, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY).
“An invitation to an academic discussion with law professors does not begin to provide the president with any semblance of a fair process.”
The Judiciary Committee’s first hearing Wednesday is expected to feature legal experts and constitutional scholars to address the framework of impeachment.
Nadler had given the White House until Sunday to say whether it would participate in that hearing, but he also set a separate Dec. 6 deadline for the administration to say if it planned to send representatives or request witnesses in the rest of the proceedings.
The announcement came as the House Intelligence Committee was set to begin reviewing a draft report of its investigation into Trump’s Ukrainian dealings after hearing testimony last month from current and former diplomats and administration officials.
If approved at a Tuesday vote, the findings will be sent to the Judiciary Committee and the panel’s members will begin to draw articles of impeachment.
Democrats claim Trump abused his power by pressing Ukraine’s president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden’s role in the firing of the country’s top prosecutor.
Meanwhile Sunday, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee declared that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) should be the first witness GOP lawmakers call to testify in the inquiry.
“First and foremost, the first person that needs to testify is Adam Schiff,” Rep. Doug Collins (Ga.) told “Fox News Sunday.”
“Adam Schiff is the author of this report. Adam Schiff has been the author of many things, a lot of them found to be false over the past couple of years.”
House Democrats’ impeachment show moves to Jerry Nadler’s Judiciary Committee this week — but don’t expect the proceedings to get any more serious. Sometime before Nadler starts things off at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Intelligence Committee chief Adam Schiff is supposed to send along his final report — which is apparently to be all the evidence the House will consider on the Ukraine matter, despite the near-complete lack of first-hand testimony.
Judiciary is simply going to “consider” whether the wrongdoings that Schiff alleges actually constitute “constitutional grounds for impeachment,” with experts brought in to opine on whether President Trump’s actions warrant such a grave step.
So there’s no chance new revelations will change minds — but also no doubt what the Democrats will conclude.
Schiff ran a circus, with the outcome known before any facts were gathered. He failed to produce any direct evidence Trump did anything to merit impeachment — mainly because his witnesses weren’t key players and had little or no direct interaction with the prez.
Yet in Dems’ rush to convict, Nadler will rely on Schiff ’’s Swiss-cheese “factual record” rather than fight in court for more dispositive testimony from, say, former National Security Adviser John Bolton.
Such battles could be time-consuming, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn’t want to spend too much time on impeachment, when the Senate trial is already likely to tie up many of her party’s presidential candidates during the early primaries.
Of course, the point has never been to determine if Trump deserves impeachment; Nadler has long insisted he “richly” does — and Democrats will face disaster from their base if they don’t go through with it.
No, the point of the hearings is to simply shift the public against the president. But Schiff ’s charade failed to move the needle — indeed some polls show opinion headed the other way. And Nadler will have an even tougher time, especially if he gives the minority Republicans more rights than Schiff did.
Last week, the Judiciary Committee boss invited the president to participate in his hearings or to “stop complaining” about the process. He might’ve just asked: When did you stop beating your wife, Mr. President?
Nadler & Co. are likely to wrap up their work and recommend impeachment shortly before the holidays. They can give the nation a great Christmas present, though, by skipping the hearings altogether — because they won’t change a thing.